ABSTRACT
The 'Doctrine of God' is one of the most original and impressive sections of the Church Dogmatics. The doctrine of election grounds the notion of theology as Theanthropology – always treating God in his relation to humanity–and determines the covenantal structure of that relation. Human beings, Karl Barth avers, genuinely know God. This is the foundation of that scientific character of theology that Barth asserts in the first volume of the Dogmatics. Barth wishes to hold two things together: the genuineness of human knowledge of God, and the dependence of that knowledge on God's self-bestowal. Barth also affirms the sacramental nature of knowledge of God and the creaturely mediation of that knowledge in the sphere of secondary objectivity. Church Dogmatics II reveals a structure of divine and human action, in which divine action is always prior to, but rather the ground of human action.
